


Cogitat ergo est (cogitans)

by ClementineStarling



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Delusions, Horror, M/M, Memory Loss, Mind Games, Sensory Deprivation, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-20 19:10:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9508067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementineStarling/pseuds/ClementineStarling
Summary: Percival Graves is losing his mind.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scrapbullet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapbullet/gifts).



> I hope the amount of sexual content is okay with you. With greetings from hell. (Pinhead wants me to say hi.)

The darkness is a tapestry of whispers, too close to his skin, chafing chafing chafing like rough spun silk on overwrought nerves. Time is meaningless here; there is no such thing as time. He couldn't say whether his imprisonment has lasted hours or days. Perhaps it's been weeks, there's no way to tell, and it's not for lack of trying. He's been groping about in the dark, racking his brains to find the thread of time again, the path out of this maze, but to no avail. There is nothing.

 _He_ did something to his mind that makes his thoughts slow, sluggish like the water trickling from the dark stone walls of his prison. They're not really there though, the walls. There are no walls, he's sure of it, even as his hands are clawing at them until his fingers bleed. This prison is but a figment of his imagination, some wicked trick that's being played on him. He's never been more certain about anything.

But he also believes there must be something solid, something to hold on to in this cotton-wool madness. He just has to find it between the illusions. 

He tries to remember how he got here but he can't even remember a _before_ – maybe there never was such a thing as before? It can't be true, though, because accepting that would be self-erasure, complete oblivion. He would cease to exist if he gave up the concept of a _before_. As long as he's thinking and feeling, he is still there. 

He's sucking at his bleeding fingertips while he stares into the darkness, wide eyed, stares and stares but there is nothing to see and he grows tired, and then, at last, on the very threshold of sleep a memory is waiting. For a moment recognition is sweet, familiar, but then as the recollection is unfolding, so are dread and despair: he remembers how he saw _him_ take his face, take his form, his body, and it felt like dying. 

_There can be only one me and it's not him_ , he thinks, _I am real, I am real, I am real_. But how certain can you be when another is wearing your face? He has already trouble remembering his name. It is strange on his tongue, unfamiliar. Percival Graves. Was that him? Was it really him? Has there been a time when he was that man?

He cannot stop thinking of himself in the past tense.

There must be something else he can recall. Now that he's found a thread, he'll have to hang onto it, see where it leads (perhaps to freedom). He pictures his appearance as it was stolen – the way his mirror-hands touched his mirror-chest, exploring a new-found form. The hands found his cock, and he felt a sympathetic pull and twitch when the familiar-strange, strangely familiar fingers closed around it and stroked experimentally, once, twice. 

His reflection seemed satisfied with the result. “Look at what a nice cock we have,” he whispered (a whisper that cut to the bone), “I guess our boy will like that.”

Our boy. He should remember what that means. “Our sweet lovely boy,” he hears himself saying. They are sharing the same voice. 

It's another thread, he can feel it, there must be a memory at the end of it, a moment from _before_. But the more he struggles the more impenetrable the past becomes. It's only when exhaustion makes him weary and finally submit to the darkness that he can sense the shadows around him. And where there are shadows there must be light.

He allows himself to fall, deep and deeper, into this net fashioned from wisps of smoke, spider webs, the silvery stuff of dreams. Once he's surrendered they transform, take shapes. He realizes he is trapped within his own memories. They're outside him, crowd this room that has neither walls nor time.

There's a boy, a lovely boy. Lips trembling, eyes downcast, afraid, ashamed. His face so vulnerable against the palm of his hand. He thinks he liked them like that, timid and fragile, or didn't he? It's so difficult to decide.

The boy looks at him with large brown eyes, and Graves can't help the sudden twist of desire in his belly, the dull throbbing of want. He wants him, bare and pale and shivering beneath him, wants to take him apart, piece by piece by fucking piece.

Air is sparse in his prison, he is gasping for breath. Perhaps there is no such thing as air at all.

The boy's hand is so small in his, slashed skin and delicate bones, he is feeling the cracks underneath, and something else, brittle as burnt paper. Dust and ashes. He wants to kiss it better, he wants to break him apart.

What was his name? The word is on the tip of his tongue. Belief, he thinks, or Faith. No, that's not it. Creed? Almost. At last: Credence.

Credence looks at him as if he's a god, and Graves decides he doesn't want to break him after all (not yet at least). He traces the wounds on his palms, knits the skin back together. But there is more, memories or illusions, he can't say, but so very vivid: the taste of his mouth, the silk-hot skin of him pressing against Graves' body.

His cock is hard and stiff in the mirror-hand. 

“You know you can have him. Just give me what I want.” Grindelwald's voice sounds like a thousand insects, the rustling of silk. He is iridescent, sometimes he is but a reflection, sometimes a wicked old man, sometimes just the sort of pretty little thing Graves likes best. 

He leans down to lap at Graves' cock, and Graves is just thankful Grindelwald isn't wearing his face (or Credence's) but another mask, gorgeous, youthful, unfamiliar. He is blond and blue-eyed and his lips are full and lush and his mouth is hot and wet and it's so good when it closes around Graves' cock. So very, very good. 

Graves lets himself be swallowed up, he's so starved he can't find the strength to resist him. He hasn't been touched for an eternity, and Grindelwald knows it. 

_That's it_ , he whispers in Graves' head, _let go_ , and Graves stops thinking. He has never felt more real than now, with his cock down Grindelwald's throat, pushing deeper. The tightness is unbearable.

 _Give me what I want_ , Grindelwald murmurs in his thoughts, and Graves is so weak now, it's not even a conscious decision. There's no resistance anymore when Grindelwald's mind cuts past his defences and deep inside him a lock clicks open. Graves comes at the same time as something else is gushing forth, silvery, unstoppable, and Grindelwald swallows the memory along with his seed.

“See that wasn't so hard, was it?” he says later when Grave lies on his back, panting, and the darkness starts closing around him again like a cruel blanket. “Enjoy your reward.”

He is alone, all alone in the dark and the quiet, and panic is slithering under his skin. He's given up his last secret, chances are he sealed his fate by betraying it, and he should be relieved that the end is near, but somehow he isn't.

Something is rustling in the night, silk and bugs and dead leaves; there's a draft, soft and warm and then a voice, so very close, so very worried.

“Mr Graves?”

Perhaps he's a delusion, perhaps a memory that's not even his own, but Graves appreciates it nonetheless, the warm, obedient body pressing against his, the adorable little gasp as he takes his mouth in a kiss, the small shivers when he puts his hands on naked skin. 

“Please Mr Graves,” the boy whines, and Graves wonders which Graves he means, not that it mattered. What is Percival Graves anyway but a swirl of thoughts and memories in a pensieve, fading echoes of a broken mind.

“Sweet boy,” he says in Grindelwald's voice, “oh sweet lovely boy.” The dark is inside him now, stirring, susurrant. Silk, insects and crumbling ashes.

_


End file.
